With the first quarter of 2017 already a wrap, there are many dietary trends that we are know are here to stay. Overall, people are drinking less alcohol, renouncing cigarettes, exercising more often and eating healthier. If you’re smart, you’ll get with the program.
Many other articles cover methods and choice tips by which to give your mains and appetizers the health kick they need to keep drawing in patrons with increasingly esoteric dietary restrictions. One nutritional piece of advice around this time of the year that can be quite damaging to our restaurants, however, is to cut out desserts entirely as a means of weight loss, unclogging arteries or mood elevation.
While there will always be a market for the uber-indulgent and ever-inventive confectionary creations of your pastry chef, nowadays if you only offer decadent desserts, you run the risk of alienating many with this compelled-to-stay-perfectly-thin mentality and crippling your chances at getting a few extra dollars from every table.
Some may argue that desserts are meant to be decadent and you simply get what you get. I advocate choice insofar as offering a few healthier dessert alternatives so that you can better appeal to this growing trend and thereby maximize revenue per turn. Moreover, if you become known as a spot for healthier desserts, then that alone may spiral into its own marketing engine to further propel awareness and popularity.
In terms of what might actually fit into the oxymoronic category of Ôhealthy desserts’, I suggest you go back to basics by excluding flour, refined sugars, butter and creams, and then working resourcefully with fruits, nuts, dark chocolate and unpasteurized honey (which actually contains many valuable nutrients as well as being more flavorful than its processed counterpart). Depending upon your views on dairy, a selection of fine cheeses also makes for an excellent last course; although this tradition still has a lot of catching on to do in North America.
Armed with only these five ingredients or classes of ingredients, challenge your chefs to come up with something wonderful beyond simply a bowl of sliced fruit, honey-baked mixed nuts or chocolate fondue. Make it a bit of a competition. As with many other creative enterprises, sometimes it is the limitations that compel us to produce our most imaginative creations.
Next, consider healthier beverages for the dessert menu. As diets change, milkshakes wane, but so too are alcoholic digestifs. Think about adding cold-pressed juices, smoothies or other healthier concoctions to the list. Much like the challenge you will present to your chefs, ask your bartenders and mixologists to come up with an alcoholic infusion to what would otherwise be deemed a vigorous brew.
As any you slice it, with nutritional conscientiousness on the rise, your menu will require improvements to this effect if you are to stay at the top of your game.
By Larry Mogelonsky, MBA, P. Eng. (www.hotelmogel.com)
After a formal engineering undergraduate degree and an MBA, plus a stint as a professional civil engineer, Larry Mogelonsky’sÊbusiness career started with a brand management position at Procter & Gamble. This was followed by half-dozen years at a top ten ad agency, where he was the team leader for the Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts business. Smitten with the hospitality Ôbug’, Larry founded LMA Communications and more recently, Hotel Mogel Consulting, a specialty consultancy dedicated to the hotel industry. Today, Larry works with hotel owners and operators across the globe. His knowledge of hospitality marketing and operations has been demonstrated through the accumulation of 75+ awards from HSMAI (Hotel Sales and Marketing Association International). His firm was also awarded the distinction of Worldwide e-Marketing Agency of the Year by TravelClick. Larry regularly contributions to many of the world’s top industry publications. He was recognized as one of the Top 25 Minds in Hospitality. He is also sought after as a keynote speaker at worldwide industry conferences. The Llama is Inn will be available in Spring 2017 through Amazon and Barnes & Noble. A Kindle edition is also available.
